In a criminal case resulting in suppressed evidence, Officer William Davis of the Dayton (OH) Police seems to have done exactly that. His bogus traffic stop resulted in the discovery of marijuana and a firearm, but none of that matters now. What was captured by his cruiser’s dashcam undercut his assertions and sworn testimony. That has led to an Ohio appeals court’s memorable decision, in which it’s declared the lower court was correct to rely on dashcam footage — rather than the officer’s testimony — when the two narratives diverged.

Alright, looks like a typical “dog bites man” story so far, although an appeals court ruling in favor of relying on video evidence instead of even a sworn statement seems so obvious that one wonders why it needed any sort of imprimatur. I mean, that’s one of the reasons that video evidence exists: memory fails and even trained observers make errors, right?

You should take a look at the linked article to see exactly what these cops tried to pull.

So now what? Seriously, I’m inclined to stop blogging about these stories, because the only noteworthy thing is the reversal.

Call me when one of these cases results in real penalties for cops that waltz into court and lie. I did several searches: the court decision (Ohio v. Calvin Wilson) and the names of the two lying bastards, and found nothing, so as of this writing, they appear to have gotten clean away. This cannot go on.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 21st, 2018 at 5:02 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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